Blockage Causes Disease

When the Health Coach Needed Help

On the day I finally admitted I wasn't okay — and the blockage I needed to clear.

My husband got home early tonight, and he's downstairs waiting for me in the workout room. The treadmill is ready and so is he — but I have to write this down before I lose the lesson.

The lesson started a long time ago. Almost twenty years ago, if I'm honest. Not the lesson itself — that part is new. But the blockage… the blockage began back then.

Yesterday a friend asked me how I was. I asked if I could lie. He said no. So I told him the truth: I felt like I was dying. It had come on so gradually over the last few years that I couldn't tell whether it was physical, mental, or spiritual — only that it was real. I'd reached the point where I barely had the strength, in any of the three, to move forward. I couldn't tell if it was gluten, or discouragement, or something else entirely. I only knew I felt sick to my stomach almost all the time.

He asked whether I'd reached out to anyone for help. I admitted I hadn't. "I'm a health coach," I said. "I'm supposed to have the answers." Gently, he reminded me of something I tell other people all the time and had somehow stopped believing for myself.

All of us need help sometimes.

After we talked, I sat and wondered: what was making me feel so nauseous, all the time? I wasn't pregnant. I wasn't on a cleanse. I just felt like I needed to be rid of something. And here's what made it so confusing — I eat healthier than just about anyone I know. Everything on my plate should have been handing me energy. I know about processed food and nutrient absorption, about enzymes in raw and fermented foods, about water and sunlight, about oils and emotional release. So why on earth couldn't I heal myself?

That night I had two classes to teach for a family, and I couldn't find anyone to cover for me, so I gathered up my five kids and went. On the way I noticed a missed call from the woman who'd arranged the class. When I reached her, she was heartbroken: her son-in-law had died the night before. I sent my husband ahead to deliver an AromaTouch kit to her grieving family, and I stayed behind at the store with a fellow coach to finish up.

And that's when my friend asked how I was doing. For once, I didn't perform. "I feel like I'm dying," I said. She turned and looked at me, startled. I meant it. "When you all see me, I dress up. I do my hair, my makeup. But underneath it, something is wrong. I feel like I'm dying."

Being seen

It was late, but she said, "Let's sit down together." As coaches we sometimes use a reflective tool — a scan that reads the body's responses and offers a kind of "story" about where a person might be holding stress. It isn't a diagnosis and never claims to be; think of it more as a conversation starter. And honestly? The real medicine that night wasn't the tool at all. It was being seen — a caring friend staying late after an exhausting day, asking the right questions, and listening while I finally said out loud what I'd been hiding for years.

The themes we ended up talking through were the ones that mattered: my heart, and how tender it had become. Comfort, and protection. A spiritual heaviness I'd been carrying and calling by other names.

My friend had noticed how I'd been craving butter and fat, and then carbohydrates — even the wholesome kind, eaten late at night when I knew better. In the language we use as coaches, reaching for fat and comfort food is often a way of guarding a tender place. And my heart, it turned out, was very tender indeed. I'd been quietly wrapping it in comfort because some part of me knew it needed protecting.

Clear the blockage, then nourish

Today I was reviewing a course on herbal healthcare, and it frames illness the way my tradition tends to: that so much of physical health begins with a well-tended inner "environment." Keep the eliminative organs working, support the liver and the bloodstream, and then nourish whatever part is hurting — clear what's stuck, get things flowing, and the body is freed to do its own healing. It's an old, Hippocratic idea: tend the whole person and the terrain, not just the symptom.

I want to be fair here, because modern medicine is a gift too, and brilliant at what it does — my own sister is a gifted nurse, and I lean on her wisdom constantly. But this "vitalist" lens, of supporting the body's own healing, is the one I was raised in as a coach. And today, reading it again, something clicked: what if a spiritual blockage works the very same way? What if buried, unprocessed pain sits in us like something stuck — and no amount of good "spiritual food" can nourish us until we finally clear it?

I've learned to trust quiet nudges like that. Not long ago another friend called me in tears; her aunt was in the final stages of liver disease, and she asked if I could help make her more comfortable. Before I left, I called my sister to prepare me for what I'd see, and she suggested a couple of oils to bring for comfort. On an instinct I couldn't explain, I also tucked in one I don't usually carry. When I arrived, that was the very one that felt right to reach for. I could be so intuitive for everyone else — so why couldn't I offer myself the same care?

The spiritual pain reliever

Sitting with my friend, I finally understood. Years ago — many years ago — something happened that hurt me far more deeply than I ever let myself feel. Instead of facing that pain and letting it heal, I reached for a kind of spiritual pain reliever: I numbed it, tucked it away, and told myself not to look. And like anything we use to numb, it took more and more over time to keep the ache quiet — until one day no amount of it worked, and I was left with both the pain and the fog of having hidden from it for so long.

A few weeks ago I had a dream. I was seated before the prophet and apostles, giving a talk about health — about how the very foods being handed to the poor were making them sicker. In the dream I was cold. Past feeling. I only wanted them to know what I knew, so they could help others. And then one of the apostles rose and came toward me. I could feel his love, his concern — I could feel that he saw straight through my cold exterior. And the closer he came, the higher my hand went up between us, as if to say stop. I dropped my head, and my heart felt like it would break. That cold exterior had been hiding an ocean of pain.

The alarm we're not meant to silence

My course reminded me today that pain is a signal. When something is wrong, the body sounds an alarm so we'll pay attention — like a smoke detector when there's a fire. It's tempting to just silence the alarm and enjoy the quiet. But the fire is still burning. The harder, kinder thing is to ask what set off the alarm, and tend to that. And I realized I'd been silencing my own spiritual alarm for years.

"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." — Matthew 11:28

I first wrote here, "Don't stuff the pain away — face it head on." But I want to say it more gently and more honestly than that. Sometimes a pain really is too big to face in the moment, and tucking it away is simply how we survive the day. So here is what I'd say now: when your body — or your spirit — finally sounds the alarm again, perhaps that isn't proof you failed by waiting. Perhaps it's a loving signal that you are ready, now, to heal.

Physically, when there's a blockage, we begin simply: get things moving again, cleanse gently, and then nourish what was hurt. I suspect it's just as simple spiritually. Go back to the basics. Get things flowing. And if the stubbornest physical trouble really is a blockage that won't clear, then maybe the stubbornest spiritual one is unforgiveness — the thing we hold onto that quietly sours everything downstream.

I don't have all the parallels worked out yet — what the liver is, spiritually, or the blood, or who does the work of turning our hardest experiences into something we can actually use. (That One is the Savior.) But I'm not afraid of the work anymore. I know it will be a process, and I know I've probably been sicker, in my soul, than I let myself admit. I'm just deeply grateful to finally know what the blockage is — and to want it gone.

Thank you to the friend who nudged me to ask for help. Thank you to my fellow coach, who stayed late after a long, hard day just to sit with me. And thank you to my mentor, Laura, for the care she pours into everyone she teaches.

My husband is upstairs now with the kids. It's late. Good night.

With much love,

Steffanie

Shared from my own heart and my own hard season — this is personal testimony, not medical or mental-health advice, and nothing here has been evaluated by the FDA. Essential oils and herbs are a comfort I love, but they walk alongside good medical and mental-health care, never in place of it; anything serious or frightening in your body deserves a doctor's eyes. And if you recognize yourself in this — carrying something heavy, dressing it up, telling everyone you're fine — please hear the whole point of my story: reaching out for help isn't a failure. It's the bravest, healthiest thing I did.